


The Things We Lose

by onekisstotakewithme



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Bisexual Hawkeye Pierce, Canon Era, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Divergent (sort of) post "The More I See You", Carlye Dies, Episode: s04e23 The More I See You, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Minor Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms feat. Hawkeye Pierce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:32:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onekisstotakewithme/pseuds/onekisstotakewithme
Summary: He stares at the words, not taking them in, not seeing anything other than the blood-red words on a white envelope, the way his gear looks after surgery. White on red means tragedy.RECIPIENT DECEASED.Carlye Walton is dead. And Hawkeye isn't (or so they tell him).





	The Things We Lose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flootzavut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flootzavut/gifts).



> This is, as always, for Floot ♥  
> And for all the angst goblins over in the Swamp
> 
> ~Read the tags and read at own risk!~

“Klinger, wow, what material is that? It’s very… flowy.” Hawk doesn’t remember the last time he actively noticed one of Klinger’s outfits, doesn’t remember the last time he crawled enough out of the hole in his heart to see anything, but today he notices.

There haven’t been wounded yet this week, there’s a warm breeze this morning, the food almost looks edible, and Klinger is dressed quite snappily for the rare nice day they’re having.

It takes too much effort to be mopey on days like this.

Klinger laughs at the unexpected compliment, and Hawk pretends not to notice BJ’s sigh of relief that Hawk is making jokes again. “Thank you sir, as eloquent as always. It’s silk.”

“Right, right, silk. Love the colour too, it brings out the color of your eyes. You make that?”

“I did sir,” Klinger tells him, and Hawk grins. “Even did it without help.”

“You’re a beauty, Corporal.”

“Always for you, Captain.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Hawk says, pointing at him.

“C’mon Hawk, breakfast first, flirt with Klinger later,” BJ says, exasperated. “This food is worse once it gets cold.”

He nudges Hawk, grabs at his elbow to shove him along, and Hawk can’t help but wink at Klinger, before they walk over to a table. It’s normal, it’s perfect, it’s like Carlye was never here at all, and Hawk is getting better at keeping his hands steady while he stitches his own heart back together.

Potter is already sitting down, sipping at a cup of coffee and reading _Stars and Stripes._ “Morning boys,” he says, without looking over his paper.

“He’s good,” Hawk says to BJ. “He can see right through his newspaper.”

“He’s like a parent,” BJ mutters back.

Potter sets down the paper, fixing them with a look, and Hawk gives him a grin, “You’re beautiful too, Colonel.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Pierce.”

“ _Au contraire_ , Colonel, it’ll get me everywhere.”

“Not with me, it won’t,” he warns, picking the paper up again.

“That’s just because I’ve yet to find out what gets you going,” Hawk says, and laughs when BJ chokes on his coffee, giving his best friend a few hearty thumps on the back.

A napkin appears over the edge of the paper. “Take it, Hunnicutt.”

“Thanks,” BJ manages, in between coughing fits. “Don’t _do_ that, Hawk.”

“And Pierce?” Potter asks, setting down his newspaper again with a grin.

“Yes, Colonel?”

“What’s got you in such a good mood? Every time I’ve seen you lately, you’ve had a storm cloud over your head. And all of a sudden, you’re sunny again. I could use your smile as a reading lamp.”

Hawk shrugs with a grin. “It’s a bright beautiful world out there, Colonel, and I intend on enjoying it.” He picks up what he thinks (hopes) is bacon, and takes a sniff. “Eugh. If we can ever get real food that is. My taste buds would throw a parade. Colonel, is there any reason why everything we eat comes in a can?”

“Look, Pierce, I’d love something fresh too, but it’s a little hard to get to the grocery store right now. Something to do with there being a war on.”

BJ laughs, and Hawk feels a bit lighter than he has in days. Carlye is gone, but BJ is here, and Potter is here, and this war is going on with or without her, and that’s fine by Hawk. Or at least, he tells himself that.

Until he sees Radar, edging towards the table with a terrible nervous look on his face. It’s the same look he wore the day he stepped into the OR to tell them that Henry never made it home.

Hawk swallows hard, looking between Potter and BJ, neither of whom have noticed Radar’s stooped shoulders. It has to be one of them, it can’t be for Hawk (can it?).

 _Is it Peggy?_ he wonders. _Or Mildred?_

 _For God’s sake,_ he thinks with a vehemence that surprises even him. _Not Peggy. Anyone but Peggy._

And it isn’t.

Because Radar steps forward and hands the letter, the damning letter, to the man whose handwriting is on the envelope.

Benjamin Franklin Pierce.

It’s his own letter, his last _desperate_ letter to Carlye, the one he wrote while drunk, the one he shouldn’t have sent, but did. He’d recognize his own frantic, drunken scrawl anywhere.

Trust Carlye to send it back unopened.

Until he turns it back over, and finds the big red words stamped across it.

_RETURN TO SENDER_

_RECIPIENT DECEASED._

He stares at the words, not taking them in, not seeing anything other than the blood-red words on a white envelope, the way his gear looks after surgery. White on red means tragedy.

_RECIPIENT DECEASED._

“Radar?” he asks, when the words go fuzzy before his eyes. “What is this?”

“It’s a letter.”

“Yeah I can see that. What the fuck does that mean, recipient deceased? Is this her idea of a joke?”

“Hawk?” BJ asks, sounding worried, but Hawk is focused on Radar.

“It’s not a joke sir, that’s a legitimate army stamp. We’ve got one just like it in the office, I can show ya if you want.”

“But this…” He turns it over and over in his hands, now realizing that others are watching this spectacle. A hysterical laugh squeezes its way past the lump in his throat, and he forces the words out, forces the laughter back. “It’s an army SNAFU, right?”

“What’s going on, son?” Potter asks, and this brings things back into focus with horrifying clarity, because Potter rarely calls anyone but Radar _son._

“This has to be a mistake, Radar,” Hawkeye tells him, his voice shaking. “I mean, this is the same army that said _I_ was dead. And I’m still here.”

“It’s no mistake, sir,” Radar says. “I’m sure of it.”

“Hawk,” BJ says again. “Who’s dead?”

“It’s… no. No, no, no, this… it’s a mistake. Carlye- she _can’t_ be dead.”

“Carlye?” Potter asks, confused.

“She was a nurse here,” BJ says, his eyes never leaving Hawk’s face.

“She’s _still_ a nurse, Beej. It’s not like she’s-” He has to stop, can’t force himself to say the words. Carlye has always come back before, hasn’t she? She’s just gotten good at leaving is all.

And this is just the grand finale.

He closes his eyes but the words are burned into the inside of his eyelids, and he’s absolutely sure he’s going to vomit, because the words are there, floating in front of him.

_RECIPIENT DECEASED._

“I need the phone.” The words spill out as he rises to his feet. “I gotta find out what happened. _How_ it happened. Let’s go, Radar.”

“But only Colonel Potter-,” Radar starts.

“Radar dammit, that’s an order!”

Radar blinks, staring at him, and he stares back. For a second, there’s silence.

“Radar,” Colonel Potter says, his voice much gentler. “Go get on the horn to I Corps, and figure out what in sweet blue blazes is goin’ on. And Hawkeye?”

Hawk swallows against the burning in his throat, his eyes stinging. “Yes, Colonel?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s I Corps that should be sorry, Colonel. They’re the ones responsible. I mean- it’s just a mistake,” Hawk tells him. “I’m gonna get on the phone and call her new unit, and it’ll just be a SNAFU. You’ll see.”

“Do you want me to come with you, Hawk?” BJ asks, touching Hawk’s hand.

Hawk pulls away, not meeting his eyes. “It’s fine, BJ. We’ll talk later.”

“If you need anything-,”

“I said _later_.” He pushes his tray back, and follows Radar out the door.

Hawkeye can see from the tension in Radar’s shoulders that he’s hurt him, but there will be time to apologize later, when he doesn’t still have a blanket in his footlocker that smells like Carlye, after he’s determined that she isn’t dead after all, just the army’s weekly fuck-up.

Only pushing through the doors to the office, Radar hurrying over to the phone, he can’t stop thinking of how Radar must have felt that awful day, getting the news that Henry’s plane had gone down, how he must have wanted to double check, to deny... only for it to all be for nothing, to have to step into the operating room with the telegram and deliver the terrible news.

Hawk’s never asked him about that day.

He never got a telegram, he thinks suddenly. They send telegrams with these things, all nice and neat and worded politely ( _there_ _were_ _no_ _survivors_...), as if by wrapping the news in polite terms and army talk, they can somehow make it less terrible.

But of _course_ he didn’t.

Those kinds of telegrams always go to the next of kin. Which means that the army notified Carlye’s husband. Doug Walton.

Death notifications don’t go to old flames you meet by chance in the backend of Korea. Old boyfriends don’t get official telegrams or _we regret to inform you_ calls, they get the news second hand or not at all. The only reason he knows is a fluke (the same kind of fluke that brought Carlye to the 4077 in the first place).

For a second, he can bring himself to hate Radar for bringing him the letter, with that damning red ink, but it’s not the kid’s fault. None of this is Radar’s fault.

“Radar, call over to Carlye’s new unit, it’s-,”

“The 8063rd,” Radar says

“The 8063rd,” Hawk finishes at the same time.

“And yeah, I’m hurrying,” Radar mutters, before shooting a cautious look in Hawk’s direction.

“Look, look, Radar. I’m sorry.”

“Me too sir.” Radar gives him a strange look, and for a second, Hawk feels oddly transparent.

“Why are you sorry?” he asks, as Radar starts to patch through the call.

“I thought that’s what you say when people die… isn’t it?”

“Radar, Carlye isn’t-,”

“Sparky?” Radar says, distracted. “Yeah, it’s Radar. Put me through to the 8063rd, and hurry. It’s urgent.”

“A matter of life or death!” Hawk calls, and Radar gives him an annoyed look.

“Yeah, thanks Sparky, I’ll wait. What’s that? Uh huh.”

“What, what what _what_?” Hawk asks.

Radar sighs. “He says it’ll take a minute to get their CO on the line.”

“I don’t want their CO, I just want to talk to Carlye,” Hawk says, slapping the top of the filing cabinet. “How long does it take to get one lousy nurse on the phone?”

“I think the record is three days,” Radar says, no doubt trying to be helpful.

“C’mon Radar!”

“What’s that?” Radar asks, distracted by the phone again. “Yeah, I’ll wait.”

“You’ll _wait?!"_  Hawk yelps, and by the looks of it Radar isn’t even listening to him anymore, now concerned with whoever he’s talking to.

“Look, Sparky, I got a captain here trying to bite my head off, can you _please_ get me Lieutenant Carlye Walton?”

There’s a moment of silence, and for a second, Hawkeye clings to that tiny shred of hope that all is not lost, that the army is just fucking around as usual, and Carlye is fine, and she’ll be coming to the phone any minute now to tell him off for being an idiot, tell him she never wants to see him again.

As long as she comes to the phone, he doesn’t care.

And then Radar speaks again, voice subdued. “When…? Three days ago?”

Hawkeye freezes.

“Aw gee sir, I-,” Radar stops, and Hawk looks over at him.

“What is it, Radar?” he asks, but he doesn’t get an answer.

“How did it happen?” Radar asks, and with those four words, Hawk feels like he’s definitely taken a mortar to the chest, and he sits down quite suddenly on Radar’s cot, his eyes focusing in on the teddy bear, every beat-up and lovingly worn inch, because if he looks anywhere else, he’s going to cry.

It feels like someone is slowly tightening a fist around his throat, his breathing turning ragged as he listens to Radar on the phone, smelling army soap and shoe polish and typewriter ink, his eyes going blurry with tears he can’t shed, because this isn’t real.

Any minute now he’s going to wake up in his cot to the sound of choppers, because this is a nightmare.

It all feels real, but it can’t be, _it can’t be._

“What’s that, sir?” Radar asks, and Hawkeye realizes he’s said it out loud.

“It can’t be,” he says again, aloud, and Radar blinks.

“I’m really sorry Captain, I know you-,”

“No,” he says, standing up. “Don’t say it, Radar. I’m…” He fishes wildly for an excuse to leave, wanting to get out from under Radar’s pitying stare, to get away from this office that is too small and too bright, and most of all wants to crawl out of his own skin and get away from himself.

His eyes are stinging, his throat is constricting painfully and if he has to stand here for one more second, he’ll lose it on Radar.

“I need a drink,” he says at last, but instead of going back to the Swamp (where BJ is waiting for news no doubt), he pushes his way in Colonel Potter’s office.

The second he’s through the door, out from under Radar’s watchful eye, he leans against the door, closing his eyes. He manages to stumble and lean against a cabinet, smelling the leather of Potter’s saddle. His knees are weak under him and he’s shaking, trying to suppress a sob, and he finally sinks to the floor, pressing his face against his knees, smelling that same army soap, and he swears he smells Carlye’s perfume.

 _Oh God, Carlye,_ he thinks, and screws up his eyes, trying and failing to keep tears from overflowing. Is this war ever going to stop? Or will it just take and take and take until there’s nobody left that Hawkeye loves?

His shoulders start shaking, the cabinet doors creaking behind him, and he presses a hand to his mouth, as if he can prevent himself from crying, but when he closes his eyes he sees Carlye’s face, and thinks about how he’ll never see it again, and he didn’t get to say goodbye, and somehow it crashes over him all at once, a tidal wave of anger and sorrow and grief, leaking out his eyes and soaking into his fatigues as he cries.

He isn’t just crying for Carlye, but for Tommy and for Henry, for Trapper, for every man he’s seen die here. And he cries for himself too, the sobs burning their way up his throat like bile, his chest heaving with the pain of it, a physical dull ache lodged just below his sternum, and he can’t seem to make himself stop, all the unsaid goodbyes lodging in his throat until he’s choking, gasping for breath.

He knew Carlye for two years, lived with her for one, might not have survived his residency without her, would have married her if he’d looked up from his work once in a while, but she had left, and he had stayed, and now here they are again, only this time she’s not coming back.

Carlye is never coming back.

He leans his head back against the door and stares at the ceiling, taking slow shuddering breaths as his heart slows, his head aching, his eyes stinging. He feels empty, devoid of life, and wonders if this is how a jack o lantern feels, all hollow once its soft insides have been scooped away.

Carlye Walton is dead.

And it’s all his fault.

It has to be his fault.

~

“Up you get son,” Potter’s voice says from somewhere above him. Hawk’s face is buried in his knees again, as if he can somehow hide from Potter, hide from the truth, because he knows what’s coming and he doesn’t want to hear it.

_I haven’t hidden since I was three._

The words come to mind unbidden, from that last first day, words he’d said to Beej about Carlye, the day she stepped out of a jeep and back into his life for the very last time. 

Potter places a gentle, almost fatherly hand on Hawk’s head. Touched as he is by the gesture, Hawk still can’t bring himself too move, because if he has to sit here and listen to what Potter has to say, listen to platitudes… it’ll be real.

It can’t be real.

How can it be real?

“Listen son, if you wanna continue this conference here on the floor, be my guest, but I’m gettin’ too old to join you.”

There’s a pause.

“Either way, you and I need to have a little talk, Hawkeye.”

_We regret to inform you…_

“No,” he says softly, speaking to his knees. “Leave me alone, Colonel.”

“Listen, son, Hunnicutt told me about your Lieutenant-,”

“She wasn’t _my_ anything, Colonel,” he says, his voice tired. “And now she isn’t anybody’s anything. She’s-” His voice cracks, and he shakes his head instead, unable to say it. If he says it, it’ll be true.

He finally looks up from his knees, only to find Potter looking down at him, the look of sympathy on his face almost too much to bear. It’s a look Hawk is familiar with, a bad news kind of face that every doctor has to prepare for situations like this.

Only this time, Hawk is on the other end of it, having fallen through a looking glass into a world just the tiniest bit off-kilter.

A world where Carlye dies.

Potter leans down further, moving to place a bracing hand on Hawk’s shoulder, and it’s all too much again, and he has to flinch away from the contact. “Please, Hawkeye.”

“I can’t,” Hawkeye says, almost pleading. “I can’t do it, Colonel.”

Potter blinks, taken aback by the admission. But instead of saying anything more, he simply holds out a hand. “C’mon son, up you get. It’s no shame to need a hand now and again.”

No doubt this is something he’s seen time and again. A veteran of three wars, an old war horse like Sherman Potter has probably even lost friends himself, lost soldiers in his command, but Hawkeye can’t fathom it. Right now, Hawkeye can’t believe that anyone could feel this way and survive.

Instead of saying anything, he takes Sherman’s hand, lets himself be helped to his feet, despite the protest of his muscles after too much time on the hard floor, feeling sick at the thought of being helped up by an old man when he’s perfectly able to do it himself. 

Once he’s on his feet, Potter squeezes his hand, before stepping away. Hawkeye collapses into one of the chairs, not meeting Potter’s eye. He stares at the desk, the grain of the wood, tracing the imperfections with his fingers, unable to look up at Sherm, because he’s feeling closed in again, surrounded by this small office and the trappings of army life and his own grief that he already can’t escape.

If he can’t escape it, it’s going to kill him.

He knows it the way he knows anatomy, the way he knows his own name.

And he can’t help but think of Doug Walton, Carlye’s husband.

No doubt sitting in a chair in his CO’s office, the way Hawk is, listening to the _when_ and the _how_ and unable to say anything, struck dumb with grief, because Carlye was his priority and now she’s dead, _she’s fucking dead,_ and all those post-war dreams of a family, of domestic bliss, have just been shattered, and he isn’t married anymore and-

Hawk can’t help but feel nauseous, because what right does he have to grieve? He fucked up Carlye’s marriage, fucked up her life enough for her to transfer to the 8063rd in the first place, and now he’s fucked up Doug Walton without ever meeting him. It’s his fault, it’s his fault, it’s-

“Son?”

He looks up, disgusted with himself, disgusted with Potter for being so fatherly and sympathetic when Hawk doesn’t deserve it, disgusted with the whole fucking situation.

“Go on, Colonel,” he says, as Potter pushes a glass of brandy across the table.

 _It’s for shock,_ Hawk thinks, but he’s not in shock, he has no right to be in shock, he’s disgusted, he’s grieving, but really he’s fine.

The brandy is part and parcel of comforting the bereaved, and Hawkeye has to shove it away, no matter how much he wants to numb himself. Forgetting would be so blissful, but he needs to know.  

“Three days ago, one of the aid stations needed replacement medical staff until they could assign regular personnel. They called the 8063rd to get their people for the temporary duty assignments. I assume you’re familiar with those procedures?”

“Yeah. They send one surgeon, one nurse, and one corpsman. Not everybody makes it back. It’s a rough neighborhood up there.” He can remember his own trips to the aid station, and immediately wishes he didn’t understand.

Potter gives him a look, and he feels worse for being flippant, for masking his feelings with a joke, but if he doesn’t, this pain, this _grief_ will swallow him whole.

“What happened?” Hawkeye asks at last when the silence stretches on unbearably.

“They were pinned down at the aid station, under heavy fire, shells falling and artillery going… and the casualties were coming in faster than they could fix ‘em. It was chaos.”

“What happened?” Hawk asks again, feeling as though his heart has migrated to his throat.

“Lieutenant Walton was performing triage when a mortar round hit. Two of the wounded died instantly. The corpsman was badly wounded but survived. And Lieutenant Walton was killed.” He stops. “…They told me it was over quick.”

“Quick and immediately are two different things,” Hawk says. He can picture the aid station all too well, and he has to fight back the urge to vomit. “Which was it?”

“Are you sure you wanna hear this?”

“I want… No, I don’t want, do I? I need to know, Colonel. I _have_ to.”

“Hawkeye-,”

“ _Which was it, Colonel?_ ”

“It wasn’t immediate.” Hawk flinches at the words, but Potter keeps talking, his quiet voice a stark contrast to the carnage he’s describing. “The surgeon there – a Doctor Dupree – did his damned best to save her, but conditions up there are too primitive, and she was just too badly hurt.”

Hawk has to swallow hard against the rising bile in his throat, because he knows exactly what kind of injuries she must have had, can picture them in gut-wrenching, nauseating detail, and _fuck_ she must have been so scared and in so much pain, and-

“I wish you hadn’t told me,” he says, at last.

 _Did they tell Doug these details?_ Hawk wonders, and has to close his eyes, pressing his fist to his mouth in some vain attempt to quell the grief, to stop himself from vomiting. _Or did they make it quick and pretty for him?_

“Excuse me, Colonel,” he says, pushing up out of his chair, because he needs to get away, needs to get out of his own skin, even if that means clawing his way out. “I gotta go.”

“At ease, son,” Potter tells him, and something in his voice makes Hawk sink back into his chair, feeling dizzy, like he can’t take a deep breath. All he can think of is blonde curls coloured red, and broken bodies and Carlye, and even when he closes his eyes, it’s all he can see.

He pulls Potter’s trash can over, and throws up.

**Author's Note:**

> At the moment, this is a one shot, but stay tuned for more!


End file.
